I attended a Quaker meeting today for the first time in my life and thus spent an hour sitting in a silent circle with eight other people. During that time I eventually experienced a profound sense of being a happy failure, a sense that was also translated into tremors of joy traveling through the whole of my body. I opened to the emptiness of Life Itself within the circle, I touched the Space of Joy within me.

How come? Some months back I listened to an interview of the Irish songwriter Hozier, whom many know as the guy singing: “Take Me To Church”. His sincerity and depth of being made an impression and also the fact that he was raised as a quaker. Quakers are a Christian sect from 1600s that relies on everybody finding their own way to God within. Thus they gather together into silent meetings, where people sit in a circle to express their equality. Anybody in the circle can stand up and tell others what this communion presses them to express. And Hozier in his spiritual maturity seemed to embody the best of this movement…

Then I forgot all about the Quakers until a couple of weeks back, when I saw a vision of how people should truly meet in a circle to enhance the possibility of seeing each other as equals. I saw a vision of a new human community, where all the members are individually anchored in the timeless and immaterial field of Life carrying them all from within. The same field of Life that is also carrying all the living beings on this planet and on all other planets and galaxies while also carrying everything that we have deemed to be non-living. It is the same emptiness which can be found within the thin veil of electrons in every atom and also between all the stars of the night sky. I saw that sitting in a circle would naturally lead the participants to ponder the emptiness within.

This reminded me of the Quakers and as I learned that the local Quakers had their silent meetings in the neighboring town I decided to give it a go. I wanted to see how the conscious sitting in a silent circle would affect me and others.

Earlier this morning I had read some pages of a book by Sadhguru (a great and – in both senses of the word – present Indian teacher) book. That which remained vibrating in me was the knowledge that we all have four different bodies or means of expression. Three of those bodies are material or time-bound. First the physical body, which obviously consists of the stuff of the Earth that we have consumed as food and which is organized by our genetic memory. Secondly we have our emotional body, which is made of the stored experiences of our physical body conveyed through the thin slits of our senses, which actually cut away most of the vibrational information coming to us. Thirdly there is the mental body, which is the storage of all that we have learned about our human life both consciously and – actually – mostly unconsciously. These three material or time-bound bodies together carry all our history and also all the troubles we have ever seen…

Then there is the energy body, which is immaterial, non-local and timeless. It energizes all the other bodies and makes them alive, at least for a while! But only for a while as everything that is born into material form is also bound to die sooner or later; whether it happens after a millisecond or a billion years does not really matter:)

How can we ever gain contact with our energy body? How can we ever truly sense that we are alive, even though we obviously are as long as our heart keeps beating? How can we get through those three time-bound bodies and gain conscious contact with the immaterial energy body? With these questions ringing in my mind I went to a Quaker meeting this afternoon…

I had difficulties finding the meeting room and thus I arrived in the nick of time. I entered the room and found a free chair in the circle. A friendly woman opened the meeting and encouraged us just to stay silent for the next hour. She would keep time for all of us.

I closed my eyes and sat still. My back was erect and my hands lay flat on my thighs. There were small human noises here and there around me, but I chose to remain in my own darkness behind my lids. Gradually the occasional coughs and other noises receded and I was left by myself. I was conscious not to react with any of my three material bodies. I allowed my body to sit still. I allowed my emotions stay quiet. And I allowed all of my memories to rest in peace:)

Suddenly my body was flushed with a joyous energy, which made my body tremble in an inner orgasm. This energy carried within itself the following message: I am a happy failure! And I saw how all my material endeavors on all those three levels shall always remain unfulfilled in one way or another. Nothing material can ever reach perfection! The swing of +/ – shall never stop, nor the swirling of electrons or our experiences of good and bad, right and wrong… On those levels I shall always be a failure however hard I try!

But when I regain my conscious contact with the immaterial source of all life – and death – within me I am flooded with streams of joy and laughter. And I become a happy failure for as long as I so choose to be. I find the only perfection ever possible for a human being, the perfect attunement with the Life Itself within me or with the Space of Joy within us all. It’s good to be a happy failure!

The silent circle of the Quakers worked just as I had expected, it supported my endeavor to reach through the layers of time to the timeless within. Thank you Quakers, you are onto something beautiful!